Since most of us live in a multicultural society with people from around the globe we often find ourselves in a mosque full of muslims from different cultures. Salaat is performed in the same manner ofcourse. However, I attend a muslim school and theres one little issue thats been bothering me for a while.
I've noticed that the muslims from the countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh tend to pray farz in namaz ofcourse but they also pray particular sunnats for say Zuhr and Maghrib. However, many of me fellow muslim friends that come from the middle east say Lebanon, Iran or Turkey etc. pray ONLY farz for namaz. As in a lot of the times i take longer to finsih zuhr prayer than my other turkish friends because they only pray 4 farz for Zuhr and I go by what i've been taught the 4 sunnat 4 farz and so on.
When i asked them I didn't get a clear response and their reply was "but farz is mandatory and the rest are just if u want to pray or not". Yes now we all know thats true but we still pray sunnat for Zuhr and Maghrib etc. This often becomes a sensitive issue to discuss with them as one of my Indian friends told me so I avoid it now. But Im conufsed as to why is this a geographic thing or something and why some people say Farz is enough whereas we go the extra mile? Thnk u all in advance

A farz for males is prefered to be prayed in Masjid, while its sunnat to pray sunnat at home.

All the Imams in earlier days (and even now in some part of the world) do that. When general public saw Imam's and aalims leaving mosques right after Farz prayer, they started thinking that they are not going to pray Farz (although they were leaving masjid to go home and complete the namaz)

From there, public started thinking that its OK, not to pray sunnat. And today what you see in Arab countries is mainly the result of that.

I did not make this up. I heard that from a very renowned hanafi scholar from karachi

When i asked them I didn't get a clear response and their reply was "but farz is mandatory and the rest are just if u want to pray or not".

Few things and my personal take on it. I normally ask these questions with myself:

- Yes, it is true, there is no sin in leaving sunnah and nawaafil salaah, but in offering them, what are we getting?

- Did Prophet ever left sunnah Mo'akkidah? If he did not, what justification will be bigger than his actions? hmmm

- There is a famous hadeeth that on the day of judgement, the nawaafil and sunnah will make up for our missing fardh salaah... my reflections:

-- If we consider ourselves pious enough and have not missed out any salah in all our life or we think we will never miss out any salah in the future, by all means, just offer fardh... no harm doing it, or is there any?

-- If we think our Faraaidh salaah are good enough and accepted enough for us on the day of judgement (when the first question will be asked about salah), then, are our faraaidh carry more weight than the salah offered by Prophet that he offered sunnah and nawaafil? If you think so, go ahead, pray only faraaidh, that should be enough...

Remember, Offering salah comes under Huqooq-ullah ... which Allah may forgive on His consent... but there is no guarantee.. only a hope and a chance... Are we concerned about Huqooq-ul-Ibaad? Which will be forgiven only if the person forgives whose right we might have violated? Do we try to find out what they are?

These are the questions we should be rather worry about IMO.

Quite often good things have hurtful consequences.There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or KILLED by their COURAGE. ~Aristotle

You are right, the sunnah will make up for the short comings of Fard, not just missing them entirely, but also when we perform them without full attention or clothes napak without our knowledge etc, then the sunnah make up for these short comings.

The Prophet(SAW) said:
"I am leaving you two things and you will never go astray as long as you cling to them -- they are the Book of Allah and my Sunnah." [Reported by Al- Haakim - Sahih].

im so glad someone asked this ques bcos i too was confused, i understand that if for example u dont have enough time to pray (which isnt really excuse- Allah maaf kare) then u can pray ur farz only but it shouldnt turn into a habit... we should try to pray all the sunnahs & nafils

may Allah tala help us to bcome better muslims & perform our salah the way we have been told to ameen

TLK - wow, thanks a lot i had no idea about that and thats exactly what i was looking for. its interesting then that a lot of the arab world is missing out on sunnats that they should be performing?? not a good thing at all.

KB- I mean people that acctually do leave sunnats, like having no intention of praying later on when they get home.

Dushwari - yea by praying together i meant the prayer room in our school and yes the mosque too at times. and the mosque and prayer room is the thing that introduced me to this.

AQ - Yes we're lucky to have been provided with sunnats. I've also heard of the sunnats making up for ur missed prayers on judgement day. Praying sunnat or not is ultimately our own decision. It just worried me how some of my fellow muslims were missing out on them.
thnx everyone

i would like to share something regarding farz n sunnah(that realy surprised me)that isonly farz namaz is from Allah,when our HOLY PROPHET MOHAMMAD SALLALLAH O ALAIWASALM started namaz(mean farz namaz)he continously read some other prayers(sunnah n nawafi) with namaz,he never ever missed these extra prayers so later on these were also included in salat so i think people read only farzALLAH know better

As every one is saying . One scholar hit it home by saying this:
" Sunnat and nafil are like extra credits which can help you improve your grades on the day of judgement in case you have bad grades in any one subject."
That subject can be missed namaz, some kind of cheating, behaving badly with parents, neighbors etc etc.
May Allah give us all taufeeq to pray our farz namaz as well as sunnat and nawafils.